A critical hit is an attack that lands for more than its normal damage. Two separate numbers control it: critical rate, how often a hit crits, and critical damage, how much extra a crit does. MapleStory Classic World treats them as independent stats, and gear and skills raise them separately.
Critical is easy to overlook because the values on individual items are small, three or four points at most, while the skills that grant it hand out fifteen to thirty-five in one go.
Contents
Where critical comes from
Skills
Two job skills exist purely to raise both numbers, and they are not balanced the same way.
| Skill | Job | Max level | Critical rate | Critical damage | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 |
Critical Shot | Bowman | 15 | +20 | +15 |
 |
Critical Throw | Assassin | 30 | +15 | +35 |
An archer ends up hitting critically more often; a thief hits far harder when it happens. Critical Throw grants more than twice the critical damage of Critical Shot, and needs twice as many skill points to max.
Three skills add critical rate as a side effect, which is easy to miss because their names describe something else entirely.
| Skill | Job | Max level | Critical rate added | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 |
Bow Mastery | Hunter | 20 | +10 |
 |
Dagger Mastery | Bandit | 20 | +20 |
 |
Precise Strikes | Warrior | 15 | +5 |
Dagger Mastery also carries a chance to ignore knockback, and the archer skill Power Knockback is described as always landing as a critical hit regardless of rate.
Two skills add critical damage as a side effect.
| Skill | Job | Max level | Critical damage added | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 |
Blunt Weapon Mastery | Page | 20 | +20 |
 |
Crossbow Mastery | Crossbowman | 20 | +20 |
Equipment
139 pieces of equipment grant critical, and they split cleanly by slot. Nothing in the game grants both numbers on the same item.
| Slot | Items | Grants |
|---|---|---|
| Gloves | 100 | critical rate, +1 to +4 |
| Weapons | 26 | critical damage, +1 to +6 |
| Earrings and accessories | 13 | critical damage, +1 to +6 |
So critical rate is a gloves stat and critical damage is a weapon and earring stat, with no overlap. A character chasing both needs at least two slots working on it.
The highest values in the game are +4 critical rate, reached by a group of level 70 gloves including Bronze Husk, Dark Lorin and Gold Eyes, and +6 critical damage, on Metal Silver Earrings and the level 65 weapon Evil Wings.
Scrolls
Both stats can be scrolled, which is the part most players miss. Two scroll families exist for them.
| Scroll family | Slot | Lesser | Intermediate | Greater | Chaos |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gloves Crit. Rate | gloves | +1 | +2 | +3 | +4 |
| Earring Crit. Damage | earring | +1 | +2 | +3 | +4 |
Because base values on items only reach +4 and +6, a scrolled pair can add as much again as the item itself carries. A pair of gloves with +4 critical rate and a full set of successful scrolls in its slots is worth several times what the raw item shows on the tooltip.
What the files do not settle
The client stores critical rate and critical damage as plain integers on items and skills, and stores nothing about how they are used. It does not record the base critical rate a character has before any gear, whether the numbers are percentage points, what multiplier a critical hit applies, or whether critical rate is capped.
The skill values are labelled in a way that strongly suggests percentages, since Critical Shot reaching +20 and Critical Throw reaching +35 line up with how the game describes them in text. This article reports the stored values and does not convert them into damage.